day 1

 
 

I'm completely smitten. And of course, Ryan is too.

We stayed in the hospital for 2 nights and in those 2 nights there were probably 2,000 kisses given-- a few between Ryan and I, but a majority on Lincoln's chubby cheeks. We celebrated his 1 day old birthday the following night at 8:47 by smooshing his face with both of our kisses. I like to imagine what he's thinking and in this last picture he's saying, "Oh come on guys, you're embarrassing me here!" 

 

Isn't life wonderful? As a whole of course. Because there are moments and periods in life where stuff just down right sucks. But as a whole, life is beautiful. Creating life is a humbling gift we've been blessed with and has made our life even more beautiful. :)

 

The two nights in the hospital were magical and quite peaceful. Lincoln was SO pleasant and easy to take care of. But he fooled us, and my mother intuition tells me this won't be the last. He wasn't quite a breeze like he was in the hospital the night we brought him home. I don't know what it is about the transition from hospital setting to the home-- I bet those nurses have something to do with it. They probably have some secret with keeping a newborn asleep through the night, but hospital policy doesn't allow that information to leave the hospital. Unfortunately, as a surgical nurse, I didn't receive that particular training. Maybe I can make friends with with an L&D nurse and swindle the secret out of her. I'll get back to you on that...

 

Which brings us to the day we brought our son home for the first time. And he slept and he slept and he slept.. which is great right? Except it was all during the day. And then night came, which was the longest night of my life-- this is coming from the girl who requires 9 hours of sleep a night. It's a requirement, not just something I enjoy. And then the second night came, and it was the same.

 

Only a few days in and I found myself breaking down crying. Normal right? Almost like a mother's rite of passage. Lack of sleep, lack of energy, a recovering body, let's not forget extremely sore breasts, and lack of faith in myself to be the mother he deserves. Our middle of the night feedings are the most endearing to me. I hold him in my arms, stroke his face and play with his little fingers. We rock back and forth and I tell him over and over how much I love him. I won't be perfect and I won't know everything, but one thing I will do is love him with all my heart... the heart that he's already stolen from me. :)

Lincoln's day

Lincoln's due date was March 19th. I posted that night about his decision (not ours) to not come on his due date. But as a celebration to the 40 weeks-- and maybe a hidden agenda of inducing labor-- we went to our favorite indian place and ordered us a spicy dish --one of the natural ways to induce labor according to the internet :)

 

Next morning, March 20th, at 3am sharp, I woke up with terrible stomach pains. Clueless they could actually be contractions, I blamed the indian food and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn't happening, the pain kept coming back, every 10 minutes...

 

Silly me, I was certain the contractions would go away. Ryan and I timed the contractions up until 6am when they finally got down to 5 minutes. This is it!! We drove to the hospital just in time to watch the sun rise. Awesome way to start a day of labor too, i highly recommend going into labor around sunrise to any of you who are expecting :)

I wish I could write details of everything that day, but no joke, it's all a blur. For the first 14 hours of labor I wasn't in terrible pain, but I took some Dilaudid to take the edge off and it pretty much put me in a state of complete daze. When my biff drove up from Tucson that day to be there, I couldn't even pull it together to open my eyes. That's what happens when you give a narcotic to a girl who NEVER EVER takes medication for hardly anything. I'm more of a gargle-with-salt-water and spoonful-of-raw-honey kinda girl when I'm sick. Anyway, let's just say I was out of it just from the IV meds.

 

By 5pm and not progressing since the afternoon, I was put on Pitocin. At this point, things got ugly, painfully ugly, and definitely the most painful part of the entire experience. So my loving and concerned husband helped round up the anesthesiologist to give me an epidural. After the epidural, I gave a huge sigh of relief and a big thank you to Dr. Hackit. He cracked a joke about his name afterwards saying, "It's a good thing I'm not a urologist huh?" I'm sure he uses that joke with every patient and rightfully so, it's a good one!

 

I was surprised at how quickly I progressed from that point. Next thing I know, it was time. This bundle of joy we had been anxiously waiting to meet, love, hug and kiss for the last 9 months is finally coming to us. Ryan and I had a few minutes alone to ourselves. The words we exchanged of our love for one another and our baby that Heavenly Father was blessing us with.....it had to have been one of the most precious moments of our marriage next to our wedding day & birth of our son.  And then he was here...

Our perfect baby boy!

 

 Introducing the newest member of our family

who is already showing off his guns to the nurses :)

 

Lincoln Joel Shideler

March 20, 2013

8:47pm

21 inches long

7lbs 12 oz

YOUR FIRST OUTFIT

Your grandma sent us a special gift in the mail, which just so happened to be your daddy's shirt he wore home from the hospital almost 29 years ago. It's washed and folded in our hospital bag for you to wear home as well. I know I'm the only person who is super stoked about this-- but then again I am your mother.

DUE DATE

COMPLIMENTS TO MY HUSBAND FOR HIS AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLZ. HE'S VERY PROUD OF HIMSELF AND SO AM I. :)

THERE'S BEEN  SO MUCH BUILD UP AND ANTICIPATION FOR TODAY'S DATE, BUT BABY BOY WASN'T FEELING IT. HE LOVES HIS MOTHER'S WOMB  TOO MUCH. I DON'T BLAME HIM. I TRIED MAKING IT A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE FOR HIM TONIGHT WITH THE SPICY INDIAN FOOD. APPARENTLY HE LIKES THAT TOO.

 

HOSPITAL BAG: CHECK

FREEZER DINNERS MADE: CHECK

BABY'S CRIB NEXT TO MY SIDE OF THE BED: CHECK

CLEAN HOME: HALF A CHECK

 

WHAT ELSE AM I MISSING? OH YAH, OUR BABY. :)

 

happy hour

 

I only like half of this statement, which is the nap being happy hour for me.

I don't like the "you know you're old" part--

for me, I just like my sleep. Age has nothing to do with the joy a nap brings me.

 

I think I'll go take one now actually...

 

and then I got sick...

I will officially say I'm feeling the pregnancy. I also officially believe I'm pregnant; where as before I had my doubts. I have 7 weeks to go and I'm not sure this baby has any more real estate to grow in. But I guess it's possible. I've been feeling all peachy up until the start of my 32 weeks when BAM! I got hit with some respiratory deal that was being passed around at work. Even working as an O.R. nurse, wearing a mask all day and washing my hands a gazillion times, doesn't exempt me from catching a bug. You would think so right? My body is like a computer chip and that bug was a tiny grain of sand that knocked out my whole hard drive. Not cool. And hacking all day and night with a pregnant belly-- I was coming undone at the seams! I'm sure my outie belly button became even more of an outie with every cough.

Either way. It's the start of a new week and week 33 of the pregnancy, I'm no longer sick. YIPPEE!!! Baby and I rejoiced today by getting off work early and having lunch together, just the two of us at a nice little restaurant by our new home.

New development: Ok baby. This development happened a few weeks ago but you've really developed this hobby lately of trying to break out of mommy's stomach. You'll SHOVE your leg out the side till it starts poking out.... which really freaked me out at first but now I lovingly push it back in and with a smirk on my face say, "Not yet my dear, you stay in there!" :) You can keep doing it though; your dad and I like to see those limbs moving around. Get all that energy out now so you'll be a little more calm once you're here.

Puerto Vallarta

I don't know about the rest of your husbands, but I know my husband puts up with a lot...especially when it comes to pictures. I'll say, "Look at this bright pink wall! Let's get our picture in front of it!" And he's such a good sport and will pose with me until we get a picture I like. Plus, it's really entertaining going through pictures all in the same spot with little variances because let's face it, it's a wee bit tricky taking pictures of yourself by placing the camera on timer, on top of someone's car, and running into position. This is one of the pictures we ended up taking: A giant pink wall with us all tiny in the corner. Hilarious. Thank you inventor of the digital camera for allowing me to take as many as my precious heart desires...

Our time in Puerto Vallarta was spent at the beach from morning to sunset. Wouldn't it be nice if we could freeze time for a short while... like during sunsets? Because sunsets go by way too quick and I just need more time to soak it in. Oh well, we enjoyed it to the best we could while it lasted. And since this is my blog and I can write whatever I want to, I'll share some news that only me and my husband find exciting. Our washer and dryer are being installed right now. :) Our very first set. No more hauling laundry to my parents or to the apartment's community laundry room, our very own. Many many years down the road, maybe I'll look back and think how silly of me to be so excited over a washer and dryer. But for the here and now, we're super excited to have our own in our own place.

Cabo San Lucas

Can I tell you how happy this guy was? We were both stoked, but he definitely had more excitement when it came to getting some delicious authentic asada tacos. I'm talking about tacos you have to walk a few blocks into town for because they're not on the main tourist streets. It's usually this shady small place that just nails it. We found the place alright. And we went back the second day and upped the order of tacos. Just writing about them is making my mouth water.

On our honeymoon, we went on a cruise to Cabo. We had an amazing experience last time we went because we spent our time there in a completely different way than others do. Ryan served an LDS mission there and while we were ported, we took a bus into town and I was able to meet some families he taught. I honestly and sincerely enjoyed it, even though I wasn't able to speak to them. (Those 3 years in high school didn't do much with my spanish speaking skills). However, at the end of the day, I shared my its-bitsy feelings of disappointment as we had to get back on the ship with no time left for the beach. I mean really, who goes to Cabo without going to the beach? I wouldn't trade the experience we had.... heck, I even met a medicine man who revealed to my newlywed husband I was constipated (thanks a lot amigo--).... but no beach time on our honeymoon in Cabo?!!?? That's just so unnatural!

 

SO, going back to Cabo on our babymoon was pa-pa-pa-perfect. And guess what... we had lots of beach time. And the weather was perfect-- clear skies, sunshine, warmth, oh and taking a boat ride to Lover's Beach  :)

babymoon

Any excuse we can get to relax just the two of us, we'll use. Using our baby boy as an excuse will not be the last. Man we're awesome parents, using our boy as an excuse and he isn't even born yet. :) Someone, somewhere, started the concept of a babymoon and whoever it was, thank-you thank-you. Knowing this was our last vacation getaway before the baby comes....let's just say reality hit us hard. Ha!

I wish my feet didn't blend into the white railing. But then again, it proved the necessity of getting some sunshine on this pasty body of mine.....

27 weeks

New Developments:
It's been awhile since I've last seen Jurassic Park. But there's a scene in the movie I thought of recently. Although I may not recall it exactly, you'll catch my drift.

It's when the two grandkids are in the jeep and waiting for help. There's a cup of water in the car and the camera zooms in and you see the water ripple, signaling T-Rex was stomping his way closer to where the kids were. The ripples got stronger and stronger and they turn around and look out the back of the jeep and .....AHHHH!!!! T-Rex is COMING!!!!!!....

I might have embellished parts of the scene but something along those lines happens in the movie. My point? Oh yeah, my point is that's what baby boy has been doing. Except instead of the water rippling, it's my tummy. I'll look down and see this jerk movement from the baby and I'll say to myself.....Ahhh!!!!! He's coming!!! And although I'm not as terrified as those kids probably were, I'm still terrified in my own way because this is finally sinking in that I'm pregnant and I feel so unprepared. We just moved into our new place, everything is in boxes, we have no nursery put together, we haven't bought a single thing for the baby...... I might as well be one of those girls on the TLC show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant. (Stupid show by the way, don't waste your time.)

It's normal to be scared though right? Everyone feels unprepared. But even as I'm writing this, baby boy is kicking up a storm and I keep stopping to look at him move. And this time I say to myself: I don't care if I feel disorganized and unprepared..... I can't wait till you're in my arms. :)